Barmakid Family (600s-900s)
The Barmakids were a family of Buddhist administrators
from the city of Balkh, in what is now Afghanistan. When the Umayyad Caliphate
conquered the area in the the mid-600s, the family converted to Islam. After
the Abbasid Revolution in 750, the Barmakids rose to prominence as talented
administrators. They carried with them centuries of experience in the Persian
Empire of how to manage large government bureaucracies, something the Arab
Abbasid caliphs were ignorant of.
As viziers, they exercised great influence on the
formation of the empire in the late 8th century. Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki
was particularly influential. He was appointed as the tutor and mentor to the
young Harun al-Rashid, who would go on to become the caliph during which the
Abbasids had their golden age. Under his tutelage, Harun al-Rashid managed to
establish peace with the empire’s neighbors, exponential economic growth, the
patronage of scholars, and a system of infrastructure that rivaled that of
ancient Rome. The Barmakid family as a whole thus had a huge impact on the
political shape of the Muslim world that would continue for centuries.
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